


A Withdrawal worthy of the Dead

by Webtrinsic



Category: Herbert West - Reanimator - H. P. Lovecraft, Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: Betrayal, Dan is mentally destroyed, Drug Withdrawal, Dubious Morality, Empathy, God Complex, Guilt, Herbert West Being Creepy, Herbert West is Vulnerable, Herbert gets arrested, Herbert realizes he's a manipulative asshole, Hurt Daniel Cain, Hurt Herbert West, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Morality, Sad Ending, Ship fic if you squint, Sickfic, Symbolism, Withdrawal, both are messed up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:28:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26075671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Webtrinsic/pseuds/Webtrinsic
Summary: It takes a withdrawal from the reagent for Herbert to realize he is not a good person. Something Dan doesn't dispute when there was once a time that he would. That's Herbert's fault as well.
Relationships: Daniel Cain & Herbert West, Daniel Cain/Herbert West
Kudos: 21





	A Withdrawal worthy of the Dead

**Author's Note:**

> So like my new obsession is herbert west if no ones noticed

It is fair to say Herbert West doesn’t always have the best grasp of his limitations when more commonly than not he is acting under the assumption that he has none at all. It is society and his mortal vessel alone that have been the biggest roadblocks in his work. 

Although he sees himself as something above humanity, he is still human. He still has the needs of a mortal man, if not a lesser amount than that if his years of coasting hadn’t adapted his body to his habits otherwise.  He knew it had because he certainly couldn’t eat as much as others without getting full within his first few bites. Of course now there was an even further skew of his observations because he was living with Dan.

Dan was a rather tall man with broad shoulders who could eat, and needed to eat to keep up with wrangling corpses and his duties at the hospital. Herbert wasn’t as big as Dan, nor had he ever been able to eat as much as the brunet could in a single sitting.

Doctor Cain also managed to sleep, sometimes in the oddest of places but Herbert chalked it up to odd hospital hours making him bask and take advantage of the moments he could settle his mind, even if it left him sore by the time he woke up.

His human limitations and his insistence on challenging them continued to be one of the starting logs on the fire that was their arguments. The bespectacled Doctor wasn’t used to having someone dote on him and insisted he partake in actions that shouldn’t be foreign.

It was alienating, something he usually brushed off uncaring, believing fitting in is too trivial a pursuit while he is enamored with seemingly a scientific madness. He was doing the work of the gods while remaining as mortal as their subjects.

He didn’t feel human, and he didn’t want to. 

His former mentor had noticed this too, non reprimanding as he handed him a vial of two cc’s and helping guide it to his vein. His pursuit is what had Herbert pushing down the plunger, and his pursuit for not only the cure of death but the escape of his restrictions is what kept him doing it again and again.

When he looks back at the distorted memory of Dan's introduction to his dependence, he is forced to reevaluate the man’s point of view when he’d questioned if he’d been dead all along.

His life before the reagent hadn’t felt like he was living at all, the people and industrial capitalist world around him did nothing but smother him. It still did now, but the second he’d started to dose, he’d ascended.  The reagent had abolished his mortal nuisances and let him work, let him pursue his work in the way he’d always wanted to. As a god.

He didn’t want to stop feeling this way but he knew it’d have to come to an end, Dan’s voice in his head startlingly clear.

“Can’t you see you’re not as above everything as you think you are?” There is pain in his voice and Herbert is all too aware of why. The bride is gone and the Dan he’d met was seemingly gone as well.

Dan seemed to be in an almost perilous state of psychosis, and although there is regret for putting his assistant in this predicament, Herbert’s selfish mind in an attempt to be above his own emotions claimed it is because their workshop basement had been torn apart and Dan was doing nothing to fix it that was making him mad.

It actually was annoying because he wanted to continue his work, the bride having been the farthest and closest thing he’s ever come to actual success but Dan is lost and angry with him, and he _sadly_ cannot do this alone. 

It is petty and childish that he takes the man’s words to heart, a challenge breaking him more in his recent failure. He is eager to prove the bastard wrong. Even if it means not walking among the gods.

_Not_ because for once in his life he truly doubts his willpower cannot get him through something, this isn’t a test, it’s a simple action to not act out on his drug induced empowerment. There is no _need_ involved, not even as he shakes and uses his bed for what is the first time in what feels like years.

He’ll sleep it all away, he could do that, he could do that even if his mind ceased to shut up and let him rest. 

_ Why?Why?Why?Why? _

He doesn’t know why he cannot sit still now when he can sit on a stool or hunch over a table for days at a time when occupied. Is that the problem? He isn’t occupied? Sleeping was a conundrum and he easily sees why he’d abandoned it for so long once again as he begins to sweat.

It is soaking his clothes, flattening his hair, and if he was wearing his glasses he knows they would have slid off his face almost comically. The excretion of fluids should be a warning for him to get some water, but his limbs are numb and he can’t even writhe.

When did his room start to swelter? Was the house on fire? Was he spontaneously combusting? No, no he’d likely smell the smoke, but he couldn’t smell anything at all, his nose felt clogged and runny, likely because his eyes were leaking.

When did he begin to cry?

He is grateful and embarrassed that the door opens then, Dan either there to ask if he’s coming down to eat or there to carry him out of their burning home.  His blurry face is only slightly cleared up as he comes closer, his large hand pushing back his bangs and feeling his temperature. Herbert is helpless not to lean into the cool touch, and he feels as if their roles have been reversed.

It is Dan who is normally a furnace and Herbert who is as cool as ice. Not that they spent a lot of time touching one another, but they were in close quarters often enough that their skins would brush and Dan would jump as if he’d fallen into an ice bath.

The man’s leaning in and Herbert can see now the other doctors look of defeat. Why must the man look like a kicked puppy all the time? He passes out before he can think further.

* * *

The smell of antiseptic is unwelcome to his illness, so is his place of residence. His body is both freezing and cold, naked except for his boxers, fastened to the very table he operated on.  He’s in their basement morgue, unable to move, unable to even close his mouth past the tube shoved down his throat, and helpless to the needle in his arm attached to an IV that he knows is there to help him but does nothing of the sort.

His mind is melting and thrashing, afraid and vulnerable in a way he is not used to. A peon, a helpless peon.

If his specimens were alive, did they feel this way when they woke from the dead? Is that why they were so inherently angry? Is this guilt he feels or terror? He doesn’t know, and Dan is above him now and running a hand through his hair before a cool towel is placed on his forehead.

The comfort being provided seems to be more for an imagined figure than himself, or in truth a being or two that are no longer in their presence. Meg and Gloria were gone and he is all that Dan has left, Dan is all he has left besides his reagent that he is not allowing (Due to the challenge), and will not be allowed to take.

He should have known one day the rug would be pulled out from under his feet, but he hadn’t thought Dan would be the one holding the frayed edges. He feels dead here when he’d felt more than alive when the one looking down.

Does he make Dan feel this way? Did he make Dan feel this way? Certainty and sanity held high above his head and out of his fastened grasp while being regarded as nothing more than a cadaver.

It takes a withdrawal worthy of a dead man to make Herbert realize remorse is a human emotion that he has no exception to. He is a small man who wants to hold the unbeatable in his hands and he’s gone too far to stop now.

He doesn’t apologize when he relapses after the fact, Dan doesn’t seem to be expecting an apology either, his packed bags and the police at the door make it clear that he expects nothing from Herbert at all. Not anymore, and he is hurt and betrayed as the cuffs come out, and Doctor West understands now as he’s torn away from his life’s work, he’d done exactly the same to Dan.

There is no place for them, because they stand the lines between God and Man and their roles switch and reverse, and for now it is Dan who is looking down at him.

**Author's Note:**

> Snap: allisonw1122  
> Tumblr/twitter: webtrinsic1122  
> Insta:Webtrinsic


End file.
